Death In Oslo

secret as it’s lying beside our bed. So here you are.’

Her glasses were starting to steam up and sweat was visible on her nose.

‘Johanne,’ Adam groaned, exasperated. ‘For God’s sake, we can’t carry on like this…’

I’m starting to get sick of this, he thought to himself. Be careful, Johanne. I don’t know how much longer I can stand your ambiguity. This transformation of my intelligent, lovely, sensible wife into an ill-tempered creature that rolls into a ball with all its spines out for no understandable reason is wearing me out. Your secrets are too big, Johanne. Too big for me, and far too big for you.

There was a ring at the door.

They both jumped. Johanne dropped the book on the floor, as if she had been caught red-handed with stolen goods.

‘Who could that be?’ Adam mumbled and looked at the clock. ‘Twenty past eleven…’

He was stiff when he got up and went to open the door.

Johanne stayed standing where she was, half turned towards the TV. The images that flickered across the screen were being watched all over the world at this very moment, irrespective of time zone or political regime, religion or ethnicity. CNN hadn’t had so many viewers since the catastrophe on Manhattan, and seemed to be greedily taking advantage of the situation. It was nearly six in the evening on the east coast. Americans, hungry for news, were on their way home from work; they had felt compelled to go, despite the morning’s terrible news. The news programme packed in more reporters, analysts, commentators and experts. They seemed more engaged than tired, as if the knowledge that they were nearing prime time gave them all renewed energy. Solemn men and women with impressive titles discussed the constitutional consequences and national contingency plans, short- and long-term crisis scenarios, terrorist organisations and the vice president’s highly criticised absence. As far as Johanne could make out, he was hidden away either in a plane somewhere over Nevada, or in a bunker in Arkansas, as one of the experts claimed. Another insisted that he knew that the vice president was already out of harm’s way at an American naval base far from the country’s shores. They discussed the twenty-fifth constitutional amendment, and everyone agreed that it was scandalous that the White House had not made it clear whether this had been activated yet or not.

That’s what they’re discussing in the real situation room, Johanne thought to herself.

She could image all the plasma screens on the walls of a cramped room in the White House, somewhere on the ground floor of the West Wing, with red geraniums outside the windows. More than six thousand kilometres away from the semi-detached house in Tasen in Oslo, a group of people were at that moment working frantically in an uncertain crisis situation, keeping a watchful eye on the same TV programmes as everyone else, while they tried to prevent the world from becoming a considerably changed place the following morning.

Every day, the many departments and agencies connected with national security received more than half a million electronic messages from embassies, military bases and other intelligence sources all over the world. They included warnings of vital importance to the nation’s security as well as insignificant memorandums they would rather be spared. Routine reports came in alongside reports of worrying enemy activity. The CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the Department of State all had their own operations centres that separated the wheat from the chaff in the incessant flow of information. Information of no importance was sent where it would do least harm, whereas important and dangerous information was tapped into messages to those who were there to deal with such matters: the Situation Room staff, a tight-knit core that had the authority to raise or lower the threshold for information, to demand more reports about particularly worrying developments, and who, most importantly, worked directly for the President.

Under George W. Bush, the screens were locked on to Fox News.

But now they once again watched CNN in the Situation Room.

Everyone did. Johanne nodded and sat down again.

The Americans were swimming in a sea of information with undercurrents that constantly threatened to pull them under. Agencies and departments, operations centres and foreign outposts, military and civil organisations – the flow of information in a crisis such as this was unbelievable. The entire American system would be on its knees by now, both domestic and international, in Washington DC and countless other cities and towns. When Johanne closed her eyes and acknowledged the indescribable fatigue that made it impossible to open them again, she thought she could hear a faint hum, like a swarm of bees in summer: tens of thousands of American civil servants who had only one aim, to bring the American president safely back home again.

And they were watching CNN.

She turned the TV off.

She felt so small. She went over to the kitchen window, which had finally been fixed. There was no longer a cold draught when she ran her hand along the windowsill. It was almost dark outside, but not quite. The spring brought with it the return of this beautiful light that made the evenings less threatening and the mornings easier.

She spun round. ‘Who was it?’

‘Work,’ he mumbled.

‘Work? At midnight on the seventeenth of May?’

He walked over to her. She was staring out of the window again. He put his arms round her slowly. She smiled and felt the goodness of his body warm her back. She relaxed. Closed her eyes.

‘I want to go to sleep,’ she whispered and ran a finger down his underarm. ‘Please take me to bed.’

‘Warren is in Oslo,’ he whispered, not letting her go, even though he felt her stiffen. ‘Warren Scifford.’

‘What?’

‘He’s here in connection with…’

Johanne was no longer listening. Her head felt light and detached, as if it was no longer her own. A flush of heat pulsed down her arms into her hands, which she lifted and pressed to the window pane. She saw the lights of an aeroplane in the sky to the north, and could not understand what it was doing there at this time of night, on a day like today. She found herself smiling without knowing why.

‘Don’t want to know,’ she said lightly. ‘You know that. Don’t want to hear about it.’

Adam refused to let her go. Her body felt smaller now; she was positively skinny. And stiff as a poker.

Warren Scifford, the Chief, had been Johanne’s teacher at the FBI Academy. And more than just a teacher, Adam had soon understood. Johanne was very young at the time, only twenty-three, whereas Warren must have been well into his forties. A love affair that happened an eternity ago. Adam had not felt even a hint of jealousy on the few occasions that he and Warren had bumped into each other. The last time must have been three or four years ago at an Interpol meeting in New Orleans, when they had even had dinner together. But for reasons that he could not explain, he had felt uncomfortable when Warren started to ask lots of questions about Johanne. He had avoided answering in any detail, and for the rest of the meal they had talked about their work and American football.

Warren Scifford played a leading role in Johanne’s great secret. Any talk of the man was forbidden, a fact that only told Adam the obvious: that he had at some point hurt her deeply.

But shit happens, he thought, and held on to Johanne. It’s horrible and can be very difficult at the time. But you get over it. It’s almost fifteen years ago now, my love. Forget it. Get over it, for God’s sake. Or is there something more?

‘Talk to me,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Can’t you just tell me what this is all about?’

‘No.’ Her voice was no more than breath.

‘I’m going to have to work with him,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

He still tried to hold on to her, but she pulled herself loose with surprising strength and pushed him away. The look in her eyes frightened him when she asked: ‘What did you say?’

‘He needs a liaison.’

‘And it has to be you. Of all the hundreds of… You said no, of course.’

In a way she suddenly seemed more present, as if she had woken up when he let go of her body.

‘I was given an order, Johanne. I work for an organisation that gives orders. Saying no is not an option.’ He made quote marks with his fingers.

Johanne turned away from him and went into the sitting room. She twisted the cork from the corkscrew and put it back into the half-empty wine bottle. Then she grabbed the glasses and took them out into the kitchen, where she put them down on the worktop. Then she checked that the dishwasher was full, put some soap in the